A rare, revolutionary movie considered as the sequel of ''CASABLANCA", one of the greatest anti-nazi and anti-fascist films of all time, having as its subject the story of ''THE FLYING DUTCHMAN''.
The film is based on the novel THE CONSPIRATORS (1943) written by the American author Frederic/ Fredric Prokosch (of Austrian descent, he was greatly admired by a whole bunch of world-class authors and especially by the philosopher Albert Camus).
THE GREAT STAR OF THE MOVIE IS PAUL HENREID (the double or doppelganger of Albert Camus).
The plot –taking place in Lisbon- combines the romance, drama, adventure, spy and thriller genres (THE FLYING DUTCHMAN has many in common with the Henreid movie entitled THE SPANISH MAIN).
The screenplay was written by the great French, antifascist journalist and author Vladimir Solomonovich Pozner (of Jewish descent, he was himself persecuted by the Nazis and fled to the US during 1940-45) & the American screenwriter, journalist, political scientist and economist Leo Calvin Rosten (of Jewish-Polish descent, he became member of the Mont Pelerin Society, collaborating also with the US government, with the Chicago School, with Wilson Allen Wallis and the Rand Corporation as well).
There are supportable rumours that the notorious Russian-Jewish philosopher Ayn Rand was asked by the Jewish American producer Hal B. Wallis -who had hired her at the time- to have a major intervention on the script of this particular movie as a screenwriter for the love scenes, before the screenplay had reached its final stage (rumours not based, though, on the resemblace of the names Ayn Rand & Henreid). For more, look here: (
https://movies.dhwritings.com/Conspir.html).
The movie was produced by the American –of Jewish and Russian descent- film and television producer Jack Chertok.
Filmed at the Warner Bros’s Studios in Burbank (California) the movie was directed by the Romanian screenwriter and director Jean Negulesco (Ioan Negulescu) who lived in the US from 1927 until 1957: Negulesco was a former painter, pupil of the great Romanian artist -painter, sculptor and photographer- Constantin Brâncusi.
Music by the “father of film music”, the Austrian composer & conductor Max (Maximilian Raoul Walter) Steiner who was a pupil of Johannes Brahms and whose godfather was the famous German composer Richard G. Strauss. Steiner was a child prodigy of Jewish & Hungarian descent who at the age of 26 -after the war of 1914 broke- he was obliged to leave England for the US.
The ''fado'' song in the movie is interpreted by the Brazilian singer Aurora Miranda da Cunha Richaid (she was the little sister of Carmen Miranda).
Finally, it is noteworthy that Hedy Lamarr (Hedwig Eva Maria Kiesler) -Austrian actress of Jewish and Galician/Ukrainian descent- was also a self-taught inventor of electronic telecommunication equipments that were functioning according to music and were used even for war, f.e. to control torpedoes (or, today, for radio guidance and satellites)!